But the song really did her in. It was the only slow song of the
evening: Abba's "The Winner Takes It All." Saturn trudged along the stage, letting her gown limply follow her. Her only attempt at movement came when the chorus repeated "..the loser standing small." Saturn crumpled to the ground in a fetal position, arms stretched outward, silently pleading for sympathy.
The audience was unimpressed. Self contemplation was not the
order of the evening. Bare flesh, not bare souls, was on tonight's menu.
Angel came on stage next. She was striking and sinewy, with watery
lips, and long brown hair that fell over her eyes. She was dancing to the disco remix of Meatloaf's "I'll Do Anything for Love but I wont do that...) Angel bumped, grinded, swooned, purred, and sighed through the entire song. Toward the end of the song, she singled out a group of Australian sailors, and dropped to he hands and knees, with her back arched high in the air. She crawled backwards, gyrating her muscular derriere in front of the flustered crew men.
As the set concluded, and the applause began, a young man sitting
near the bar felt two warm hands crawl down his neck and onto his chest. Long red fingernails traced circles around his nipples.
"I'm Jennifer," the voice said.
The voice was attached to a strong featured woman with rich
chocolate skin and hair that never ended. Jennifer nibbled at the young man's ear with perfumed breath and asked him if he had a fat wallet.
"No," he said.
Her hands froze on the man's chest. One long fingernail began to
curl around the contours of his Adam's apple. The other hand slowly
inched its way up his bicep.
"Then I hope you got a fat something else."
Jennifer laughed and squeezed the man's knee.
She knew she'd make money that evening. It's one of the golden laws of the Mother Lode. The women always walk out of there with money.
The Mother Lode is a place that eschews lines. The lines suggesting gender have been completely blurred. The bar is famous for serving up femininity with a twist: beautiful women with male organs.
Here, ostensibly straight men come to have affairs with transgendered women. The men visit the bar for a variety of reasons: some are fetishists, some are closeted homosexuals, and others have concepts of feminine beauty so exaggerated they can only be acheived by men in drag.
Ted Bates is a man who knows who he is. He is neither a fetishist nor ambivalent about his sexual preferences. He is married, and has three kids. He has money, and is not afraid to show it. Unlike many of the other customers, he is supremely confident; never appearing nervous or awkward.
Everything about Bates is comfortable: his cardigan sweater, his loose slacks, his worn-out tennis shoes. He projects an effortless jocularity: the kind found in successful business men and avid golfers.
Bates does not view the Mother Lode as a scary, erotic temple. For him, it is neither a place of awe nor reverence. It is nothing more than a seedy country club.
"I like women," he says. "Women, women, women. All my life I've had nothing but women."
Bates speaks in simple, declarative sentences. He will often repeat himself, making sure the listener grasps the gist of what he is saying.
Bates pauses, taking a sip of scotch. He swirls his glass, letting the
ice cubes knock against each other.
"But every once in a while...." Bates glances coward the stage where his girlfriend, Angel, is dancing to the disco remix of a popular ballad. He tips his drink toward her and gives a little wave. She see him and turns
"Look at that. That's something else, isn't it?"
Bates is watching Angel dancing. She is flirting with other customers, paying him no attention.
"Look at that body. That's all woman. Mother Nature screwed up somewhere . "
Bates finishes his scotch, and heads toward the stage. He calls to Angel, but she continues to ignore him. Bates shrugs his shoulders and
orders another scotch.
"She's mad because she's not going to Disneyland. I told her I'd take her, but I cancelled the business meeting I had in L.A. She hasn't said
a word to me in two days, but she'll get over it."
"You know what it all comes down to?" Bates rubs his index finger and thumb together in the universal sign for money. He pulls out a wad of bills from his pocket.
"I've given her emerald rings, gold necklaces, perfume. I take her out to eat at the best restaurants in the city. No one treats her as well as I do. She'll come back."
Bates is standing at the bar with the other members of the country club set. Like Bates, they are all dressed casually. Most of them are regulars, and date the women from the bar.
"Watch this."
Bates pulls a quarter from his pocket and puts it on the bar.
"Twenty bucks says I can put this quarter on my thumb and hit anyone in the bar with it."
A couple of takers cough up the money. A target is needed. Bates' eyes roam around the bar until they settle on Angel, who is standing at least twenty feet away, talking to another of the dancers. Bates places the quarter on this thumb and steadies himself. He tilts his wrist back as if
cocking a gun, and lets the quarter fly. The quarter spirals through the air until it lands with a thunk on the bridge of Angel's nose. Angel gives a surprised yelp and looks around the room.
The country club set is laughing. Bates blows lightly on his thumb.
Angel looks at Bates, who gives her a satisfied grin. She walks toward him, and the barflies start to move out of the way. Angel slams the quarter down on the bar, stares at Bates and spits on him, cursing him in Spanish before leaving the bar full of fury. Still grinning from ear to ear, Bates removes the saliva from his face with a napkin.
Across the bar from the country-club set, Jennifer Jackson is sitting by herself and sipping a coke. Her outfit is understated: beige levis and a white cotton blouse. The outfit makes a statement. Nothing too garish. She knows the game, but she's not playing. At least not tonight.
"The men who come in here go for a certain kind of look. A lot of them are married. They get married to virginal, pure women, had kids, got a career, and now they're coming into the bars. And they're looking for girls with painted faces, and breasts out to here...
"Last week this salesman came in here. He thought he was hot shit, throwing around all his money. I couldn't wait to bring him to his knees.
He's they type of man you go out to a restaurant with and make sure to
order the most expensive thing on the menu."
Jennifer finishes her coke, and looks toward the stage, where a new dancer is being introduced.
"Applause . "
"Applause."
The voice of Mother Lode owner Mark Gilpin, complete with Southern twang, comes drifting over the bar from the DJ booth.
"I said applaud, Goddammit, or I'll get up on stage and dance."
The audience responds to the cue, and applauds vigorously for the next performer The performer's name is Vicki Marline, and word has it
the she used to have a bombshell Marilyn Monroe-type figure. But that was in the 60's, and though still spry, Vicki Marlane shows more than a little signs of age.
"Honey, you been around the block so many times, you need to strap on a pair of running shoes," Gilpin says.
Vicki Marlane sits on a stool with her legs crossed, cradling a microphone. "I may have been around the block, but I ain't half as tired as you are," she says.
"You ain't half as pretty either. And when's the last time you had
something that looked like that in your hands that you didn't pay for?" Gilpin says, referring to the phallic-looking microphone that Vicki Marlane is clutching in her hands.
Miss Marlane examines the microphone, and slowly uncrosses her
legs. She rises from the stool, and walks gingerly toward the edge of the stage. Her bleached-blond bouffant hairdo bobs up and down with her
movement, and a loose-fitting white dress reveals the creases in her flesh.
Marlane squats on the edge of the stage and sings along with an old
cabaret song that's playing in the background. Her words are punctuated by the sounds of drum beats and symbols clashing. A long throaty growl comes up through her huge glistening teeth and bright red lipstick.
"I'm evil."
Boom..
' I'm nasty. "
Crash.
"And I'm coming for youuuuuu..."
The Mother Lode is full of people with claims to power. The men
have the money. The women have their sex. The bartenders dispense the liquor that makes the transactions between money and sex run more
smoothly. The bouncers can escort the undesirables out. But, ultimately, there is only one person with real power in the Mother Lode. And he sits tucked away in the DJ booth, drink in hand, looking out over his kingdom.
Mark Gilpin is an overweight, sometimes drag-queen with a reputation for nastiness. His likes and dislikes are profound and wellknown. He has a pecking order, and way up at the top are desirable young men. They are followed, in turn, by paying male customers, and the women who perform at the bar. Way down at the bottom of the scale are biological women. These are the lepers of Gilpin's world, and he has very little tolerance for them.
'"Goddammit, I've told you three times already to knock that shit off!"
A woman named Claire is dancing with another woman on the stage. This is an egregious sin, and it's a little more than Gilpin can take.
"Get out," he commands.
The woman protests that she was only dancing. Then, knowing his disdain for lesbians, the woman informs Gilpin that her dance partner is actually her sister. Gilpin doesn't care if it's the woman's mother. The stage is reserved for the Mother Lode women only. The woman leaves, escorted out of the bar by an off-duty policeman who occasionally patrols the outside of the bar.
In between a huge photo of a half-naked man cooling himself off in a stream, and a picture of Gilpin in drag, is a list of names. These names constitute the "86 list." These are individuals who are no longer welcome in the bar. The woman who got kicked out for dancing with her partner may or may not end up on the list, depending on Gilpin's frame of mind. There are women on the list who fell out of favor for drug use, for fighting with each other or with the patrons, or for overt acts of prostitution.
One woman who is featured prominently on the list is named Debra Austin. In ray of 1993, Debra Austin claims that Gilpin and some of his bartenders physically assaulted her, throwing her to the ground, and injuring her face, neck, and back. She is suing the bar and Gilpin for an undisclosed amount of money. To this day, Gilpin forbids the mere mention of her name in his bar.
Daylight in the Mother Lode brings a reprieve from the loud,
throbbing, disco music, and stage shows. The bar is emptier and more relaxed. The noises from outside the bar mingle with those inside the bar, and the other Lode becomes less of an island, and more part of the neighborhood.
Down the street, in the dying light of a Tuesday afternoon, men are chewing up the concrete with jackhammers. The groans of the heavy machinery rise above the shrieking and giggling of the girls who sit inside the bar, watching the workers.
It is a striking contrast. The road workers are stereotypically
masculine: sweaty and hairy, with sun-baked bodies. Their powerful arms plunge the drills into the cement with rhythmic continuity. The women are hyper-feminine: their faces flawlessly made up, hair teased, jewelry jangling from their ears and wrists.
One of the women gets up from the bar, and ventures outside. She
slowly walks up and down the street in her tight-fitting levis. Some of the workers stop drilling and stare. Inside the bar, the remaining women burst into peals of victorious laughter, and give each other high-lives.
Jerry Cohn watches all this take place with a bemused look on his
"I never thought I'd be coming into a place like this," he says.
Cohn is an unassuming middle-aged man with thinning hair and
small wire-framed glasses.
"I started coming here about three months ago. I just happened in
by chance," he says. '
Cohn is drinking his usual drink: a cranberry calistoga with a straw. He and one of the bartenders are motorcycle enthusiasts and they are discussing a racing course in the Berkeley Hills that is well known for its dangerous curves.
Cohn says he used to date the women here regularly, but has since stopped.
"There is a trap you can fall into here," he says. "The women are all very beautiful, but they lead sad lives."
' When I first started coming here, and I didn't know anyone, it was easy to just take a girl home. It was anonymous. I didn't have to care about them. But then, after awhile, you get to know a few of them, and you get emotionally tangled up in their lives. A lot of them are into drugs, or don't have jobs. You can't have a normal longterm relationship with them, because they always having something else going on.
" Now when I get together with some of the girls, I'll take them out for a cup of coffee, or maybe a movie. Sometimes, I'll lend them money if they need it. But I try to steer clear of anything too serious."
The road workers outside are calling it quits for the day, and the women inside are playing a dice game. They are using shot glasses to roll the dice with, and it makes loud, clanking noises as it falls onto the bar.
"You know," Cohn says as he watches the women playing with the
dice, "I've seen lives ruined by this place."
It's early Saturday moming, and the show is about to wind down. The bar will close down soon, and Gilpin wants to make sure that anyone still left watching the women has a drink in their hands.
"Get a drink in your hands, or leave."
A few early-moming strdgglers place their last orders.
Jennifer Jackson is sitting at a table near the back of the bar with an old man w-ho has been a regular at the bar for many years; The old man is hard of hearing, and Jackson has to shout when she's.talking to him.
"Do you want anything from the bar?" she sholts at him.
He still has a half-bottle of Budweiser, and shakes his head "no."
Jackson feels sorry lor the old man. He's spent a lot ol time and money at this bar, she says, and now tha his health is on the wane, and his income is derived from social secrity, many of the women will have little to do with him.
---FIN---